Naming Conventions

My father-in-law was born Halvor Gunderson Strand in 1912.  He died before I ever met his son, Kory Slaatthaug.  If Halvor’s parents hadn’t moved to the Slaatthaug farm when he was two years old, my husband’s last name would now be Strand.  In those days, every time someone moved, their “last name” changed, because in Norway, since the beginning of time, a person’s “last name” was really their address.  (What Norwegians called their “last name” is what we would call their “middle name.”)

Because first names get passed down from generation to generation, there ends up being a lot of people with the same name living in one area.  Halvor was known as “Halvor, the son of Gunder,” but more than likely, there would be more than one guy (most likely related to him) with that exact name in the neighborhood, so he was called “Halvor, son of Gunder who lives by the beach.” (“Strand” is the Norwegian word for beach.) 

Most every “address name” is a geographic location: beach, hill, woods, gravel pit, valley, bay, etc.  My husband’s last name, Slaatthaug, means “harvested hill.” The geographic name indicates where the farm is actually situated, and when people moved from farm to farm, they obviously had to change their address.  In 1923 however, the Norwegian government realized it was too difficult to keep track of people, based on this naming convention/tradition, so they made a law that said everyone had to keep whatever their name was at that time, and even if they moved, they shouldn’t change it, so that tradition died.

First names are still recycled over and over again in Norway because traditionally, the first born son takes the name of his father’s father’s.  The second born son often has the name of his mother’s father.  Girls are frequently named after their grandmothers.  A very old tradition was to name the newest family member after someone that just died.  Since infant mortality was high, a woman might birth four babies through the years, all with the same first name, but only one made it to adulthood.  Strangely enough, I’ve even seen family trees where the father’s name was Ole and all four of his living sons had the same name.  (Perhaps George Foreman is Norwegian?)

Up until twenty years ago, all baby names had to be submitted to the government for approval before a birth certificate was issued.  It was thought that having an unusual first name might be detrimental to the child, so conformity and standardization was encouraged.  But with traditional first names like Dagfinn, Roar, Oddrun, Bent, Birger, Frode, and Snorre, ya gotta wonder what they were thinking.